Drawer and door fronts for cabinets, such as kitchen, bathroom or other storage units have traditionally been manufactured from wood, man-made wood products, metal, and/or plastic. Typically, these fronts are made from multiple pieces, fastened together using mechanical fasteners such as nails, screws, bolts, welds, adhesives, etc. This not only complicates the design of the door or drawer fronts, but adds to the material cost and the labor cost. In situations where metal is used to fabricate the door or drawer fronts, two panels, a front and a rear, are traditionally fastened together to create an assembly by spot-welding or using screw-type fasteners. The problem with each of these fastening methods is that, in addition to high labor costs, they leave obvious and unsightly evidence of their presence on the exterior of the door or drawer front, and that is unacceptable in many markets.
Additionally, when sheet metal is formed to create the panels of the door or drawer front, the juncture at the corners where the vertical walls of the panels meet leaves a gap that is also unsightly and undesirable. Some have chosen to arc or gas weld this joint, and then grind down the weld to attempt to create a visually pleasing joint, but even with the finest craftsmanship, the ground weld leaves evil notice of its presence. This problem manifests itself not only on the outside corners of the panel, but also on inside corners when one desires to incorporate an opening in the panel, or to provide an insert such as a decorative panel or a glass window. Like the exterior corners, the edges and corners of these inside corners of the opening need to be treated to alter any rough edges for both safety and aesthetics. The usual method is to carefully smooth and polish the cut edges, but this also requires extra assembly steps, each increasing the end product cost, and the appearance is still not of the highest quality, obviating the creation of an opening with a clean, modern appearance. Additionally, the prior art that welded the front and rear panels together sandwiched the insert panel permanently between the front and rear panels, and if the glass window were to be damaged or broken, it could not be repaired without destroying the entire assembly. It would be a valuable addition to the art if a method to create an opening in a metal drawer or door front could be designed that would obviate the need for these extra labor steps, would have smooth and uniform edges to create an aesthetically pleasing and cost effective assembly, and could be easily repaired or modified without destroying the entire assembly.